THE SEX FILES: See Ya In The Funny Papers

In doing some research for another piece I happened to be writing this week (yes, I do actually manage to produce other blogs, articles and work that is not just SEX FILES related) I came across some facts on the comic Gale Allen and her All-Girl Squadron and this truly got me thinking. Miss Allen was a pulp comic star of the 1940’s, a hip-chick ray gun-sporting hottie who battled all sorts of nasties in the ‘future’ years of the 1990s and beyond and made it all look so cool running around in her stilettos and two piece uniform. Less you think the lady sported so much leg simply because she was drawn by men, it is interesting to note that Gale Allen was often illustrated by a talented woman artist named Fran Deitrick Hopper (so take that you crusading feminists) and she is considered a prototype of positive femininity.

As to be expected in her comics, there are thrusting phallic-shaped space ships forever chasing after Gale and her girls and quite a bit of not-so-subtle references to societal troubles of the day.

While most of us are not so much going to look back to the pulps for our thrills and chills (though there are lots of places to check-out this stuff online and plenty of publishers collecting Gale Allen pulp pieces and the like) I forge forward for you my readers (God what I won’t do for you, really) to seek out what their might presently be in the more ‘adult’ comic genre, beyond the innuendos we giggle at on Family Guy or South Park. If you know this field at all you’ll be familiar with Robert Crumb, Dean Yeagle, Howard Cruse and the constant influx of Japanese Anime but I tend to like some social commentary with my sex. I dig the Gale Allen stuff because of the metaphors-albeit not so subtle that they were-to the times and for this I’d like to hip you to some things happening presently that both titillate and stimulate.

Did you happen to hear about the recent # 636 issue of Archie, where Sabrina swaps the sexes of Archie, so he becomes “Archina,” Betty “Billy,” and Veronica “Ronnie”…how many young readers will feel a tingle from these exchanges and not even know why? As will be seen in the Astonishing X-Men issue 51, (out 6/20) Jean-Paul Beaubier-“Northstar” as he is better known-will by marrying Kyle in the first-ever same-sex wedding to take place in a comic…off or on panel. And of course anyone who is anyone in comics heard this past week that none other than Green Arrow is gay!

Subtle or not, sex is out there in drawn-panel form and many times what’s being written or illustrated in a story carries a lot more weight than just what seems to be some space adventuring or a good few pages of some doe-eyed school girl getting spanked. Have a look see.

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